Category: Our Classes

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Christmas is coming…

With Advent, carol concert practice and classroom decorations, Christmas is really on its way. The children have their names for their Kriskringles. We have been talking about what we can do during Advent, the period of preparation for Christmas; and the children suggested that doing small daily acts of daily kindness is one way of showing love for one another, in the way that God showed his love for people by sending Jesus. We are practising songs for the carol concert in earnest and looking forward to seeing you at the concert on Monday 12th. We are learning this fantastic Christmas song. Please could you practise it at home. Thank you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lnYDohCNSM

The classroom looks very festive.

The children’s fantastic explanation writing is on display – either on the or in one of two books. This week they completed a very different piece of writing, retelling “FaRther” with a different ending, when they used personification, similes, expanded noun phrases and fronted adverbials to write figuratively. In both cases every child focused and wrote incredibly well.

In Maths we’ve moved onto applying multiplication and division facts. The children are using the correct terminology for division; and used practice of the facts using manipulatives to make generalisations about division. For example, the class worked out that if the dividend and the quotient are the same, then the divisor has to be one. Or, if the dividend and divisor are the same, then the quotient must one 1. Today they have been constructing sentences like “The product of 8 x 4 is 32” or “6 x 3 is the same as 3 x 6 because of the commutative rule in multiplication.” Can your child explain these terms to you, in different contexts?

Please remember the deadline for the Called RE home learning which is 8th December.

Today was the last session of Gaelic Football which the children really loved. I will send a thank you email to Rory of Herts GAA for providing this first-class coaching to the school.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

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Nursery – 02.12.2022

Hello Everyone!

The children have been getting excited for Christmas this week and they like looking at the decorations we have in class. We read a story this week about a little boy who writes a letter to Father Christmas asking for different presents. We talked about the presents we would like to receive and on Monday we drew a picture of what we would like. Yesterday we went to the Post Box to send our letters to Father Christmas, the children went in small groups and posted their letter into the box – how exciting. We also went into the Post Office and saw a huge pile of boxes ready to be delivered to people’s homes.

This week we said goodbye to the Post Office, we had a great time working on the computer, talking on the telephone and writing our letters! We now have Santa’s Workshop! The children enjoyed going in there in small groups to see what they could do in there – wrapping presents for Santa.

Photos from this week.

The children are still practising their songs for our Christmas Nativity and I am sure they are singing them at home. Our performance is at 10:30am on Tuesday 13th December. Please remember that costumes need to be in school by Monday 5th December.

Have a good weekend

Miss Taylor

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Reception – Baptism

25.11.22

Hello parents,
Thank you very much for sharing lovely photos and artefacts from your child’s Baptism. We loved looking at them and discussing what is Baptism, welcoming into God’s family.


We played in our church, baptising babies and saying the special words: ‘I baptise you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy spirit. Amen’. We made a beautiful stained glass windows and wrote a special prayer.

Little Wandle
This week we’ve learned 4 new digraphs:

Thank you for helping your children practise the new diagraphs.
Please make sure that you ‘read’ the new tricky words too.

Maths

This week, the children were building on their understanding of the composition of numbers by investigating the composition of 3, 4 and 5. Composing and de-composing numbers involves the children investigating part–part–whole relations, e.g. seeing that 3 can be composed of 1 and 2. Through practical experience, they will consolidate their understanding of a whole being made up of smaller parts.

Things to remember:

Monday 2:30 pm Library visit – You are very welcome to join us!
Friday reading mornings – 8:45am to 9:00 am.
Friday non – uniform day in exchange of £1/£2 pounds.
Saturday – family disco 4pm-7pm
Our reading practise books need to be returned by Monday. Please make sure that they are in the zippy bags together with tricky words book and reading record.

Have a fantastic weekend!
Mrs Solakova

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Nursery 25.11.22

Another busy week has flown by in Nursery!

The children now know what part they will be playing in our Christmas Nativity – Angel Express. We have been practising the words and actions to the songs and I am sure the children will be singing them at home!

Our production will take place on Tuesday 13th December at 10:30, we hope you can join us! Please invite grandparents to watch too!

This week in nursery the children really enjoyed building houses in our outside area, lots of children were using the tools to fix parts together and I could see lots of teamwork going on – well done everyone! Just what I like to see!

This morning we went to an assembly in the hall – there were lots of people in the hall! We sat and watched as the Christmas tree was decorated and lots of the children said ‘wow’ when the lights came on.

In class we made some decorations to go on the tree in the hall, we also started making some decorations for the Nursery. Thank you parents for all the kind donations!

This morning we went to the library to change our books, we enjoyed looking through all the books and enjoyed sitting on the comfy chairs.

Pictures from this week.

Important Dates:

Monday 5th December – all Nativity costumes to be in school

Tuesday 13th December – Angel Express production by EYFS – 10:30AM.

Reading Morning – Friday 2nd, 9th and 16th in classrooms – 08:45 – 09:00AM.

Have a lovely weekend and see you on Monday

Miss Taylor

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Year 2 designers!

As part of our their learning in Design Technology, we have been exploring structures. Having discovered that a structure needs to have a flat base in order to be stable, we then explored cylinders as so many of the strong and stable structures that we have found are made of cylinders (just take a look at our playground climbing frame).

We learned how to create a cylinder out of a rectangle and were amazed to find out just how strong and stable a cylinder can be. Our challenge was to find out how many books our homemade cylinders could hold and some carried over 50 books. What a strong structure a cylinder is and that explains why our table and chair legs are cylindrical shaped!

Our final challenge was to design and create a chair for a bear. Having explored different structures, we set up our design criteria first. For a chair to be effective, it needed to be stable so that the bear did not fall off! We had great fun developing our joining techniques, adapting our ideas as we worked together and then tested our chairs to see if we had created a stable structure.

We are very proud of the final results as we all used card and sellotape to create a chair that a bear could sit on without falling off.

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Loving the Library

The children are getting to know their way round the library and are very much enjoying their time there. The beautiful books there, both fiction and non-fiction, complement the “reading scheme” books. As with the class reading books, the children have completely free choice with the library books. The reading scheme books are carefully matched to their reading age and are to be read independently and fluently (which means with 95% accuracy). The class and library books can be read independently by the children, or shared with adults, or can be read by the adults to the children.

The reading stars sheets have been added to the children’s books and are ready for signatures to be added, which will be converted into housepoints.

Thank you for the beautiful birthday books which have been bought for the library, by Darragh and Gabriel. Children over the years will love reading them.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend.

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Reception – Children in Need

Hello parents and children,

What a week! At the beginning we came to school wearing odd socks and on a Friday we were all covered in spots and stripes. The children were also learning about Islam and took part in a special Islam assembly.

Odd socks day went really well and we spend the day showing off our odd socks and designing even more on the craft table. We also talked about what makes us different and how being different makes us stand out! Elmer the patchwork elephant helped us all to understand it. We all decided that if everyone was the same the world will not be as colorful as it is.

In RE this week we were learning interesting facts about the muslim prayer mat. We were very lucky to have a real pro. Thank you Year 2 for showing us how muslim people pray. It was very interesting and we learned so much. We also watched a video and if you like you can show it to your mummies and daddies :

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02q87r8

Little Wandle
We continued our journey in learning new phonemes and digraphs. The children are brilliant in blending and they are even practising how to read a full sentences. Here is what we’ve learned this week:

Please practise the new phonemes and graphemes with your children. This will really help them become confident in recognising them.

First Library visit
We are very blessed to have such a lovely space for reading and sharing wonderful stories. Our first visit was on a Monday afternoon and the children were absolutely brilliant showing everybody their best behavior.

Reading morning

A big thank you for staying and reading with your child. We were all very excited to show you our lovely classroom and all the fabulous things we were busy with.

Children in need

On a Friday we came to school all spotty and stripy. We talked about different ways to support children in need and why we need to do that. We made Pudsey bear masks and learned new words like charity and donation.

Things to remember:

Monday 2:30 pm Library visit – You are very welcome to join us!
Friday reading mornings – 8:45am to 9:00 am.
Our reading practise books need to be returned by Monday. Please make sure that they are in the zippy bags together with tricky words book and reading record.

Isabel Thomas visit – Tuesday 2:15pm
Dressing of the tree and Advent service – Friday 25th of November

Have a fantastic weekend!
Mrs Solakova

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Nursery – 18.11.2022

This week started off with our PE session in the hall, this half term the children are working on their ball skills, we have started on with rolling! The children did very well rolling their ball around the cones.

Storm

This week we looked at the book ‘Storm’ by Sam Usher. It is story about a little boy and his grandad flying a kite in the park before the storm arrives! The children made their own kites and had the opportunity to fly them out in the playground.


Islam Week

This week we learnt about the Islamic faith, we looked at some beautiful pictures of Mosques and learnt that this is a special place where Muslims go to pray. We had a visitor from Year 2 who showed us how to use a prayer mat and all the children made a prayer mat using different material.

Children In Need

The children looked fantasia in their spots and stripes today for Children In Need, thank you for all the donations. We watched a short video explaining why Children in Need is an important day and we talked about Pudsey Bear! The children enjoyed making Pudsey masks in class.

Please join us each Friday 8:45-09:00am to read a story with your child in the classroom, siblings welcome.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Miss Taylor

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Shining a light on the week

This week, the children worked hard at making their torches, using their understanding of circuits from their science learning. Some of the work was fiddly and tricky and there was lots of excellent and co-operation and perseverance.

This week the children learnt about the 9, 11 and 12 times tables and different ways of working out the products to equations. The children are improving at representing the calculations in different ways.

At assembly today, the children shared what they had learnt about The Qu’ran with the rest of the school. They have also completed writing fantastic explanation texts about the lifecycle of a flowering plant. This used their knowledge about pollination, fertilization and the growth of plants from year 3 to write detailed explanation texts with features like causal conjunctions, subheadings and lots of correctly-spelt technical language.

Everyone is making good progress in swimming. It was decidedly nippy when we set off this morning! As the weather gets colder, you might want to send your child with a woolly hat for when we leave Westminster Lodge.

Well done to the children who remembered their library books today. We will go to the library every Thursday.

I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

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Stories Galore in Year 6!

First of all, a huge thank you for the support that our Year 6 parents gave to the cake sale before the half-term break. The parents raised a fantastic total which we have used to make a significant dent in our ’50 great books to read in Year 6′ wishlist. Next week, we will introduce a system for checking our ’50 books’ in and out of our class library, but I know that the children will love reading these new titles.

We have made an impressive dent in our wish list, but if you would like to help and contribute a book to our class library, you can find out about the titles still on our wishlist by following this link.

Next week, we are excited to be welcoming Isabel Thomas to our school. Isabel is an award-winning children’s author and science writer. Isabel will be sharing her experiences as a writer with us in assembly on Tuesday afternoon as well as ‘officially’ opening our new library. There will be a chance to purchase some of Isabel’s fantastic books and get them signed by the author. You can learn more about Isabel’s books and her work on her website: https://isabelthomas.co.uk/

We have been honing our skills as authors too. In English, our learning has centred on Nicola Davies’ book, ‘The Promise’. We have written our own sequels inspired by this uplifting story of redemption and renewal. I’d invite you to take a moment to follow the link to read Jayron’s story: It will brighten your day!

Jayron’s story

When I was a young man, I lived in a city that was glum and cruel and lost. Its streets were as horrible as socks that haven’t been washed, broken by human recklessness, and never blessed with clean rain. A grimy, disgusting wind constantly blew, sneaking around the buildings like a jaguar that is ready to pounce.

And then, just when the sun had fallen, I met an old man in a narrow alleyway. He was slow and feeble, the perfect prey. His bag was big and bulky, but when I tried to take it from him, he gripped it as if his life was on the line. Backwards and forwards we tugged at that bag until eventually, he exclaimed, ”If you promise to share them I will let go.” 

What is he going on about? I didn’t understand nor did I want to understand, I just wanted whatever was in the bag, so I said, “Ok I promise.” He loosened his tight grip immediately and grinned at me. I sprinted away without looking back at the old man, thinking of all the lovely things in his bag.

But when I opened it – there was nothing but muffins. My eyes were drawn to them, so plump, so perfect and so many, immediately I realised the promise I had undertaken. I held the key to satisfaction, and my goals were changed. I pushed aside my own selfish thoughts of food and money. And for the first time in my life I felt blessed, more rich than I ever thought I could be. I slept with the muffins for my pillow, my head full of delicious dreams.

In the morning, I began to fulfil my promise. I shared my muffins with homeless and poor people, in flats, near buildings, markets and stores, by roads, street lights and train tracks, in galleries and houses, behind school buildings and parks, at bus stops, cafes, shops. I shunned the glum and cruel and lost and I shared and shared and shared.

Nothing altered at first. The grimy, disgusting wind still constantly blew, sneaking around the buildings. The people still stayed inside their homes. But gradually, gradually, gradually signs of kindness appeared. Satisfaction! First here and there, then everywhere. People came onto the streets to see. They smelled the muffins in wonder, and grinned. They ate muffins together in parks. They spoke and chuckled. And pretty soon they were sharing too. Muffins and cakes, donuts and bread in parks and gardens, on balconies and rooftops. Pastries spread through the city like a running trend, being shared between people, drawing people from their homes.

But by then I was already far away, sharing with another neglected and dull city… and another… and another… and another. And last night, down a dark street, a young robber fought me for my bag of muffins. I grinned and asked if he would undertake the promise, knowing how goals can change, knowing that my sharing will go on.

Next week, as we prepare to mark the start of Advent, we will be making decorations to get our classroom ready for Christmas. If you have any unwanted decorations that you are able to donate to our class, it will add a spark of Christmas cheer to the weeks ahead.

On top of all that has been happening this week, our fantastic school council organised a mufti-day and art competition in support of children in need. The children looked great and had a brilliant day. Well done, everyone!